


Breath In, Breath Out

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Cassian Andor, Boba Fett was too busy being a bounty hunter for sexy times, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, Strangers to Lovers, both broken bitter boys need love, touch-starved boba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 05:26:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16804498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Two nights, a year apart, shared between a bounty hunter and a spy.





	Breath In, Breath Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FettsOnTop (GTFF)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTFF/gifts).



Tatooine is hot. Hot enough to make Boba Fet's thoughts swim unpleasantly, drifting out of his control. Hot enough that it hurts in bones far too young to ache the way they do. That probably has more to do with how thin he is, he reflects. But when credits are so hard earned, it feels like a waste to use them on something as easy to skip as meals.

He’s in his twenties now, as far as he can tell. He’s had some good jobs, enough to make money to repair the Slave I, to build his armor together. It will never look like Jango’s, will never gleam cold and bright.

There’s nothing about him that gleams.

He’s tired, and scruffy, and always a little bit hungry.

And he’s hungry for more than just food, though he never admits that to himself. A small part of him (growing smaller and colder each year spent alone) aches for the warm touch of another person. But unlike a hunger for food, there’s no easy way, at least not for him and the morals he has, to meet that need. It’s not that he hasn’t considered the standard way other lonely bastards throughout the galaxy meet that need. It’s that when he does think of it, standing in the red light district of some forsaken planet or another, he remembers his father’s warnings.

That intimacy is power you surrender to someone else.

That it isn’t something that can be bought and sold, unlike everything else.

That letting someone touch you is giving them power over you.

He feels like he has so little power, so little control, over everything else in his life, that he’s not willing to give that bit of control up.

And because… he’s not even sure what he wants. Not really. Sometimes he dreams about kissing another person, or about warm hands against his cold skin, but he’s just as likely to dream of drowning in the dark, monstrous seas of Kamino as he is of pleasure.

But the need is still there, coiled within him, like a Nexu waiting to pounce on injured prey.

It’s one of those cold hungry nights that he finally gives in to that demanding need. He’d left his armor in the ship, though he was still quite well armed, and headed back into the Mos Eisley cantina that he usually avoided when he was working for Jabba. Earlier today a man had caught his attention, the way that usually only a flash of credits could. The man had delicate features, long, slender hands and high cheekbones, but the casual coarseness of someone who had been in plenty of skirmishes before. HIs blaster on his hip had clearly seen a good deal of combat, from the way the paint had chipped from the muzzle, and the way he’d watched the cantina’s crowd warily told Boba the man was no drunkard, despite acting as one.

All those things added together, combined with his hungry need for touch, resulted in an interest far too strong for Boba to ignore. So he’d showered, and even put on a shirt and trousers instead of the flight suit he was prone to wearing if he didn’t have his armor on, then headed back to the cantia.

Now, he orders a drink, and settles in, watching. Waiting.

No one notices him. If he drew any attention, after all, it was always only the whispered words _clone trooper._ Sometimes, it amused him that his helmeted face was far more instantly recognizable than what lay it. His DNA gave him more obscurity than his armor ever would.

Just when he’s about to give up, to go back to the Slave I and let his hands take care of the matter of his need, the man reappears.

There’s a little more stubble on his face than there had been that morning. Boba’s own face is clean-shaven, which he figures is why he gets mistaken for being younger than he is. What Boba doesn’t realize, of course, is that he does look younger without his armor, that his brown eyes go wide, taking in sights and sounds that his helmet normally filters away.

To a stranger, Boba Fett the young man looks downright _innocent._

“Buy you a drink?” he manages to say when the man comes closer.

The stranger tilts his head, hair falling into his eyes. “That so?”

“Yeah. A drink.” He’s rapidly losing confidence he knows how to do this.

“Any reason why?”

“I, uh,” he flushes, hot. “I wanted to get to know you.” It’s not a bad answer, he thinks, until the man laughs. His chuckle is bitter and cold.

“Well, that won’t happen, with or without a drink.” He settles into the chair next to Boba, and nods at him. “But if you’re looking for something to occupy your night, well, why not.”

He blinks. That seemed… far too easy.

“You’re not… looking for credits for that. RIght?” Boba finds himself deeply uncomfortable at this whole encounter and wishes he stuck to just dreaming about touching another person.

But his words make the man blush, and Boba realizes he’s young, too. About his age. Both of them worn down by conflict rather than the passing of years. “No. No money. It’s not like that.”

“Then what?”

“Just not someone who likes a lot of questions, if you know what I mean.”

“Good.” Boba stands, trying to take control of the situation. “We’re in agreement there.”

“Got a room?”

This whole exchange is happening far faster than he’d thought it would, but then again, it usually took Boba less time to agree to kill someone, so really, he shouldn’t be surprised.

The moment the man shuts the door behind them, leaving them alone in a simple rented room, Boba springs forward. For a moment, it feels like the rush of a fistfight, the collision of bodies as they meet. But then, instead of pain, pleasure spreads over him, when his lips met those of the shorter man. Boba presses him against the wall, kissing him like a wildfire spreads over dry grass, kissing him like he’d only dreamed of.

And the man reacts just like a dream would. Gasping softly, his hands pressing against Boba’s back, pulling him closer.

Heat rises between them.

The man gasps out a name, _Joreth_ , in between kisses. Boba doesn’t have a fake one to offer, not at first, and manages at the last minute, as Joreth’s desire presses against his hip bone, to mutter _Fev._

It’s more an exhale than any name, but he’s rapidly losing the ability to form coherent thoughts. All the warnings he’d been told when he was younger make more sense now. Because when Joreth drops to his knees, pressing kisses against the fabric-covered outline of Boba’s erection, he’s pretty sure he’d surrender any information the man wanted to know.  
If wanted to ask.

Which thankfully, he doesn't.

Boba makes himself a promise he’ll never do this again, right before Joreth tugs down his trousers to plant biting kisses up his thigh.

And then, all Boba’s promises, thoughts, fears, fly away faster than lightspeed, as he gets the first blowjob of his life.

After, they collapse onto the bed. He knows he should offer something to Joreth, something beyond the messy kisses he’s still content to give him, but he doesn’t know what. He might have dead aim skills with a blaster, but he’s not quite sure of his control of his teeth if he was to take someone’s most tender part in his mouth.

So, instead, he busies himself undressing the man. The clothes he tugs off seem to be Imperial issue, and Boba wonders if he’s gone to bed with an Imperial officer gone slumming among the locals.

But no officer would be this thin, this desperate for touch. He’s seen how they live, their grand apartments, even taken missions protecting their glittering little spouses.

Boba realizes then, that he’s done something even stupider. He’s just gotten head from a rebel spy.

Well. He'll just stay quiet. Leave in the morning. No questions asked.

A few minutes later, it’s Joreth who asks a question. “You, uh, want this?”

It takes Boba a moment to realize what’s going on. That the way they’ve tangled together on the narrow bed placed Boba beneath the man. That Joreth’s elegant hands have been gently stroking a very tender area for Boba, and that he’s enjoyed it quite a bit.

“I’ve got oil,” Joreth comments. “I can be gentle.”

He’s not sure he wants gentle, but he knows he wants the man. If this is going to be his only time surrendering to the aching demands of his body, then he’s going to experience all he can. “Yeah,” he manages through kiss-chapped lips. “Do it.”

“You sure?” Joreth reaches for the bottle that sits on a turned over crate next to the bed. “I don’t mind if we don’t.”

The way he speaks is dignified, careful. More refined than the types Boba’s used to dealing with. Maybe that’s the appeal. The feeling of surrendering to someone who looks so fragile that Boba could snap him in half with one strong kick. “Yeah.”

Joreth prepares him efficiently and yet, more tenderly than Boba thinks he really deserves. This is a damned one night stand, a quick fuck in a dirty rented room. He doesn’t need soft kisses along the curves of his hips, or warm hands rubbing away the knots in the small of his back.

But he finds he wants all of that a great deal.

He rolls onto his stomach, to muffle his hungry moans in the flat little pillow the bed has.

“Uh,” Joreth begins.

Boba realizes there’s a distinctive lump in the pillow. A pistol. Loaded, but with the safety locked. Felt like a BlasTech, maybe a A280… one that could easily be made into a sniper, if needed. It’s not the sort an Imperial would have. But it’s a damn good weapon for a spy. Without thinking much of it, he slides his hand under the pillow, and pushes the blaster down between the bed and the floor. He’s more familiar with that action, and that weapon, than anything else that’s happened in the room. It’s bitterly amusing to him that he was more familiar with an outline of a gun than he’d been with the outline of the cock pressing against him an hour before. Boba’s come to collect plenty of people who think sleeping with a weapon close at hand will save them.

A momentary fear, new and sudden, flashes in his mind, and he tenses. Imagining taking on a contract a month from now, and stalking into a bedroom, only to find it was Joreth he was paid to kill.

Shit.

He hadn’t thought of that, and now this intimate moment feels horribly ruined.

“Hey now,” Joreth rubs his back. “It’s okay. I’ll be gentle. It’ll be good for both of us. We don’t have to…”

“I want to,” he mutters through gritted teeth.  
“First time?” Joreth asks. There’s the slightest beginning of a pressure against Boba’s rear. He swallows, knowing what’s next. Wanting it as much as he hates himself for craving it. So he doesn't answer, refusing to admit his lack of knowledge. Joreth keeps talking, one had on Boba’s bare back.

He wonders if Joreth noticed the scars from a jail keeper’s lash, the way he’d noticed the poorly healed blaster marks on Joreth’s shoulder.

“Breath in,” Joreth whispers. “Breath out. Deep breaths.”

Although he wants to mutter about how he’s no innocent fool in need of lessons, Boba finds himself doing exactly what he’s commanded to. One shuddering breath. Another.

The pressure grows, laced with a sudden, bright-white flash of pain.

_Another breath._

_Another._

The third turns into a shuddering moan, because now everything feels _so damn good._ So right. Hot and vivid and rich, better than anything else he’s ever known. Joreth’s sigh echoes Boba’s pleasure, and he rocks deeper into him.

“That’s good.” He comments. “You’re good. You’re doing good.”

Boba’s anything but good. He’s a bounty hunter. A criminal. A dealer of death. But there, on that narrow little bed, for one night, he feels like he knows what goodness, what hope, and what pleasure might be like, if he was a different man.

A man who could love. Or at least care, maybe more than he should, about someone else. A man who will always carry a debt to the spy-or-turncoat-or-who-knows-what-he-is who fucks him so thoroughly, and yet, so gently, coaxing waves of pleasure from Boba until his voice goes hoarse and his body goes limp.

Until he screams Joreth’s name in utter and complete ecstasy for one blinding moment.

In the morning, Joreth is gone. Boba’s weapons, left in his pile of clothes, are untouched. The pistol behind the bed, though, is gone.

_Breath in._

He pushes his thoughts of tracking Joreth down. He’s a bounty hunter, not a lover. He’s an instrument of justice for anyone who wants to hire him, and his tools are at their disposal. Not his own. Not even i it would be so easy for him to find one sharp-witted young rebel spy, since he’s already hacked the private Alliance comm channels. Not even if that’s all he desperately wants.  
He can’t afford to want.

_Breath out_

He can't afford any feelings. Not now. Not ever. Just living is costly enough. He's learned that lesson a thousand times over. Trust only leads to betrayal, affection only results in pain. The one constant in his life is his work. He knows how to hunt, to kill, to do what he's trained his whole life to do.Soon, he leaves both Tatooine and the thought of ever seeking pleasure like again, far behind him. The memories of Joreth, though, linger far beyond any other dreams.

But there's always more work to be done. More jobs to take. Eventually, even the best memories fade away.

* * *

Ashiv’ar is a dirty, disgusting planet, with thick, choking orange smog that smothers any natural light, and faint earthquakes that shake every building each hour.

Cassian tells himself its the earthquakes that have made his hands so unsteady. Just like he tells himself it’s the smog that makes him keep blinking away tears. He’s perched high up on an abandoned building, with his sniper rifle to his left, and his commlink to signal for a pickup once his job is done to his right.

But it’s been an hour, and the job still isn’t done.

The man, the traitor, the target, is still eating dinner with his wife. Cassian keeps telling himself to call Dr. Yusivi a target. Not a man. Not a person with a wife and kids.

He keeps telling himself he can complete this mission.

He’s twenty-one.

He can do this.

It doesn’t seem to matter to his hands, or his heart, that he’s killed before. Those times, his heart insists, those had been Imperials. Stormtroopers. Murderers and enslavers. Or, they’d been the first to attack him. He’s been fighting back since he was a child.  
He knows how to fight.

He’s not sure he knows how to assassinate.

He swallows, and pushes a lock of hair out of his eyes. Then, with a sudden chill down his spine, he knows something has shifted in the plans. The watcher is being watched. He turns his head carefully, left hand sliding into his coat pocket for his holdout blaster. “Who’s there?”

The man who steps out of the shadows wears Mandalorian armor. Green, mostly, faded, and battered. Cassian recalls some broadcast on some planet or other, and picks the name from his memory. “Boba Fett?”

There’s a long, long pause. Too long a pause for this to turn into a fight. What’s going on? If he's got a bounty on his head, there's no way he's going down without a fight. And then, the helmeted man says one word. A single word that’s enough to utterly and completely shake the mostly unflappable captain.

“Joreth.”

The fake name, and the accented voice together, are a deadly cocktail. A memory of one night, one hot, pleasure-soaked night, on Tatooine last year flashes to the front of his mind. A man his age, with the calluses of a soldier, the scars of a fighter, and the innocent eyes of someone who was desperate for pleasure. For connection. For all that Cassian had tried to give him.

Fierfeking hells.

He’d fucked Boba Fett.

But Boba doesn’t comment on that. Instead, he inclines his head at the sniper rifle beyond Cassian. “First time?”

The words are an echo of what Cassian had said to him that night, and yet, mean something so different. He swallows, and nods. “I’m no coward.”

“Then do your task.”

The command is so sharp, so cold, and so removed from the whimpering moans he’d last heard from that voice. But Cassian obeys, though he’s not entirely sure why. He turns, knowing he’s exposing his back to the bounty hunter, but also knowing if Fett wanted to kill him, he had more than ample opportunity.

Carefully, he repoistions the blaster, places his chin in the position to look through the scope. The doctor has just begun dessert, taking a spoonful of fruit-laden pudding at a time. There’s not much time left.

Boba crouches next to him. He moves silently, for all that armor he wears. It’s hard not to remember how thin, how young, the man beneath all those weapons was. Harder still not to remember how desperate and how hungry his kisses had been. _Focus on the task at hand,_ Cassian, he scolds himself.

Boba says, softly. “Breath in.”

He does.

“Breath out.”

One shuddering breath, and his hands are trembling again. The doctor hadn’t meant to betray them. Had just been trying to survive. Wasn’t that what they were all trying to do these days.  
“Breath in,” Boba commands once more.

But there’s more at stake than one life, one person’s happiness. The whole Rebellion could fall to pieces if the doctor finishes this meal and sends that last message to the Imps waiting just beyond the city limits.

“Breath out.”

With that last breath, Cassian’s finger hooks around the trigger. He presses down. The recoil slams into his shoulder like the impact of a fist. Or the collision of one body against another in passion. But he knows his aim is true.

The work is done.

He turns, to see Boba still next to him. His breath catches once more as Boba’s hand reaches out. Is this it then? There’s a whipcord on that gauntlet, one that could choke out his last breath in seconds.

But the hand simply catches Cassian’s own. Squeezes once. “You did good,” he comments. “Good shot. Clean. Efficient.”

“Yeah. efficient.” Cassian echoes.

“It’s what you were tasked to do.”

Boba’s cold voice offers a surprising amount of comfort to him. More surprising yet is the way that hand pulls Cassian to standing. The helmet come off then, confirming that yes, it’s the same man from that night. And the same hunger is still in his eyes, the same heat in his kiss. Cassian’s hands can’t find a place to rest, not with the jetpack on his back and all the armor on his chest. So he settles for tugging Boba’s hips against his, and kisses him back with all his fury at what he’s been asked to do for the REbellion that owns his heart and his life.

Boba meets that intensity with his own, his gloved fingers twisting in Cassian’s hair, his lips leaving bitemarks down his neck.

_Breath in._

“My ship’s close,” Boba whispers.

_Breath out._

“I’ve got a rendezvous.”

_Breath in._

“Fine.” Boba pulls back and bends down for the helmet left on the ground. He doesn’t put it back on, though Cassian wishes he would. He can’t handle the fiery frustration in those eyes, that same emotion he knows is on his own face.

He wants him. And he can’t have him. Not now. Not ever again.

Boba Fett leaves without another word.

Cassian stands there for a long moment. Then, he shoulders the rifle, picks up the comm link, and clicks it on. “Fulcrum here. Ready for pickup. Mission complete.”

He closes his eyes while he waits for the ship.

Tries not to remember the heat of the kiss or the feeling of his finger against the trigger. Both of them, in some small way, are betrayals.

Maybe it’s him who deserved that shot.

But the Rebellion needs him, more than he needs to feel… wanted. More than he deserves to be needed by another.

‘He’s a tool, a fulcrum, a lever to move the pieces of the gameboard into play. He’s not a man with desires. Not anymore. He can’t afford to be.

_Breath in._

For one moment longer, he remembers how good it felt to be wanted. To know that someone else in this damned broken galaxy cares, even a little, if he lives or dies.

_Breath out._

It’s time for the next mission.


End file.
